


sought death on a queen-sized bed

by figure8



Series: it's not where you come from (it's where you belong) [8]
Category: DCU, Green Arrow (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Character Study, Don't Ask Don't Tell, F/M, HIV/AIDS, M/M, Unrequited Love, like.... vague allusions to it through metaphor but it's There
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-22 00:41:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7411646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/pseuds/figure8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Did you meet a nice boy while I was away, Mister Queen?” Bruce teases.</i>
</p><p>--</p><p>Companion piece to <i>when love was blind</i>. Ollie's side of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sought death on a queen-sized bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aestate_aertenae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aestate_aertenae/gifts).



> i'll post a way longer note on the new ATINM chapter (which is around 70% done!! holy shit!!), but i just wanted you guys to like, have something. real life has been a bitch, but things are slowly getting back to normal, which means i can write in relative peace. i'm still sorry for the wait.  
> i've been rereading green lantern/green arrow, and, ehhh. i was trying to get hal into this verse anyway, so, might as well. this is sad, but it does get better in the end.  
> enjoy <3

**_Touch me, yeah_ **

**_I want you to touch me there_ **

**_Make me feel like I am breathing_ **

**_Feel like I am human_ **

 

 

 

It is an unavoidable truth, a universal constant. The sky is blue, the sun rises in the East, and Oliver Queen is in love with Bruce Wayne.

 

*

 

The guy at the bar looks like trouble, looks like a good time. He tells Oliver his name is Danny and Ollie laughs, already almost drunk, the rancorous taste of cheap beer sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“There’s no way in hell that’s your real name,” he grins. “You don’t look like a Daniel.”

“You’re going to have to make do with it,” the stranger shrugs.

Later, hours later, he’ll whisper against Ollie’s jaw, breath hot, fingers clawing at Ollie’s back, _Hal. My name is Hal._

Later, hours later, he’ll say, _Air Force_. _I can’t, I can’t be—_

Oliver has already let one man that can never fully be himself into his heart. He’s not doing it again. He’s not opening that door.

 

*

 

It’s a soft ache, a candle with a wavering flame. When they were younger, every single one of Bruce’s stares used to burn. Oliver remembers searching his bare arms for marks, for scabs, for any kind of trace. Proof that Bruce had touched him, proof that loving him left scars.

He doesn’t think he’s in love with Bruce, not really, not anymore. He has loved other people, better people, easier people. Men, women, sometimes both at the same time. Most of them are dead, now, and Ollie is just waiting for his turn, waiting for the illness to take him. It would only be fair, wouldn’t it? After all, isn’t he just as much of a sinner? Hasn’t he gotten on his knees enough, hasn’t he desecrated the holy act of praying? It’s a hard life, waiting to be struck by God’s thunderbolt. It’s a tiring life.

But his skin is smooth, pale, always pristine. No matter how hard he looks for Bruce’s fingerprints, no matter how many times he mistakes a shadow for an open wound, Oliver cruises through a decade of horrors untouched, unmarked, unloved, alive.

 

*

 

In the crowded pub, Oliver’s eyes scan the room for any man with hair that isn’t black and eyes that aren’t blue. _Danny_ is so different from Bruce Oliver could cry in relief. He’s still goddamn beautiful, and that too, is reassuring. _I can want other people, I can breathe away from you_.

Bruce is so, so far away. Coked up to the nose, anything to forget about how people like them are dying left and right, how the world is terrible and no one will ever be forgiven. Oliver hasn’t touched drugs in months, too terrified of spending his last healthy minutes out of his own head. It’s a constant specter, a phantom living nested inside his chest. Fear.

He never thought he would ever be so afraid.

 

*

 

Bruce told him about Clark once, too high to realize he was talking out loud. _He broke my heart, he broke my heart, he broke my heart, so I broke his_.

Ollie remembers thinking, I want to reach inside his ribcage and fix the broken pieces. My daddy taught me how to use a hammer and he taught me how to glue things back together. Ollie remembers thinking, _you broke my heart too. You are constantly breaking my heart_.

 

*

 

His name is Hal, which suits him far better than Daniel. His name is Hal and he’s an Air Force Captain, and he kissed Ollie for the first time just so that he could shut him up. They’ve only stopped fighting long enough to fuck, and even during that, Ollie thinks they were still fighting.

 

*

 

“I don’t—” Oliver grimaces. “I don’t do guys.”

“Clearly,” Hal snickers, motioning to the nonexistent space between their naked bodies.

“No,” Oliver sighs. “I meant emotional attachment. Relationships.”

“What, is that too queer for you, mister macho man? You can stick your dick in me, but giving me your number, nah, that’s for pussies?”

Oliver turns his face at that, looking away. “Don’t say that,” he says finally, jaw clenched. “That’s not—I’m not like that.”

Hal’s expression is closed now, all humor gone. It makes him look older, more tired. “It’s not like I was asking for your hand,” he says, shrugging. “I’m shipping out to Kuwait in three weeks.”

Oliver pushes himself up from the mattress. “Don’t remind me.”

“Ah, yes,” Hal sneers. “I’m lending my arms to the imperialist monster.”

“Yes,” Oliver says, unflinching. “And as a gay man, you should _know_ that the American government—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Hal grits, getting up too. “Don’t you dare—you can’t even handle _feelings_ —”

“I’ve been in love with my best friend since I was fourteen, don’t talk to me about _feelings_ , you son of a—”

Hal says, “Ah, so even through all that self-righteousness, you’re capable of loving people?” and Ollie socks him in the jaw.

 

*

 

They fuck against the wall, angry, hurt, every thrust a sentence unsaid. They fuck in Ollie’s bed in that sad hotel room and Ollie licks the blood off Hal’s face and Hal touches his shoulder so softly and whispers _baby baby I’m sorry I didn’t mean it_ and Ollie watches as a dark bruise blooms on Hal’s skin and they both hate themselves enough to not touch each other in the shower they share. They’ve known each other seven hours and it feels like seven years.

Oliver doesn’t think of Bruce for even one minute, except for that one time Hal laughs and throws his head back, gorgeous in a way that is achingly familiar and bittersweet.

 _You cannot have this,_ the nasty voice inside Ollie’s head says, and Ollie wants to scream, wants to destroy this hotel room. His hand shakes a little and he breathes in, breathes out, pushes the thought away.

 _But I want it_ , like a small child in front of the cash register. _But I want him_.

 

*

 

Oliver’s father died and left him with fist-shaped holes all over his body. Oh, they were never real fists. They were never real bruises. They were _I love you but you’re worthless_. They were _Take that commie bullshit out of my house_. They were _If your mother ever learns about this it will kill her_.

Oliver’s father died and his mother is still alive, and she learned about this, and it didn’t kill her. She marched in Pride parades with him. She held his hand as he was yelling himself hoarse, and they raised his hastily-sewn rainbow flag together. Somehow, it doesn’t make any of the other shit Robert Queen said sound like lies. Somehow, Oliver still believes him.

Sometimes, he wants to tell Bruce how lucky he is that his parents will never disappoint him, that his parents will always be that perfect picture printed in expensive A5 glossy paper. Pictures cannot speak. Pictures will never look at you while spitting the word failure.

(Pictures can’t hold you close at night after you’ve had a nightmare, either, and so Oliver keeps his mouth shut.)

 

*

 

He calls Dinah. He can hear her smile through the phone, knows by now what her amused huffs look like. Knows how her lips taste when she’s happy. He thinks he’s a little in love with her too, and isn’t that the real disease? How he latches onto people when they put barriers between themselves and him?

She asks, “Ollie, sweetheart, what are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s the first honest thing he’s said in days.

She asks, “Ollie, babe, do you want my professional advice?”

He says, “Maybe.” He says, “No.”

“I love you,” Dinah says before hanging up. He’ll wonder for hours afterwards how she meant it. He’ll wonder for hours afterwards, how he wanted her to mean it. His heart is a mess, his heart is a battlefield. There is so much love to give. There are so many ways to fuck things up.

 

*

 

“I lied,” he tells Hal. “I lied, I was just scared, I don’t want to be hurt again.”

 

*

 

In the end, he doesn’t give Hal his phone number because Hal doesn’t need to call him. They don’t leave each other’s side for the three weeks of freedom Hal has left. Ollie flies them back to Starling, back to his penthouse, back to familiar ground. Hal laughs when he realizes, whispers _Oliver Queen_ and laughs again. Says, “Of course you can afford to be a bleeding heart,” and they fight again. Hal yells about how this—he gestures to his bomber jacket, the one that has his name on it, the one that tells the world he’s a pilot—paid for college, paid for that ticket he so desperately needed to get out of town. Oliver doesn’t yell. Oliver is very quiet. Hal hates him a little for it, spits viciously, “What, never quite realized you were fucking white trash?” just so that he can elicit a reaction out of him. He’s hoping for a screaming match. He’s hoping for a broken nose.

He thinks he could fall in love with the way Oliver just looks at him, looks at him like he wants to drink him in, and says calmly but with an incredible sadness to his voice, “Never talk about yourself that way.”

 

*

 

He kisses Hal goodbye inside the safety of his house. Hal is trembling a little, shaky and real in Ollie’s arms.

“It’s just the cold,” he says. Oliver wants to cry.

“When are you coming back?” he asks instead, and then curses himself because he should know, he should know that. But they’ve talked of other things, in the twenty-four days they shared. They dissected the world, they repainted it black and then red in their dreams.

“I’ll call you,” Hal just says.

“You don’t have my number,” Oliver shoots back, and it sounds like an inside joke, but it’s not funny.

“I know where to find you, Mister Queen,” Hal smiles. And oh, that smile. Oliver doesn’t know the curve of it by heart yet, and there’s something devastating about how he’ll never be able to draw it with his eyes closed. There’s something devastating about how he has one more reason to hate the US Military now. There’s something devastating about goodbyes.

“Don’t get killed,” he tells Hal, asks him, begs him. Doesn’t say, please, come back to me.

 

*

 

The second week, they drove down to Florida, shared frozen Mojitos on Miami Beach. Hal stopped at one, loopy grin purposefully innocent as he shrugged, “Mom’s an alcoholic.”

Ollie had to hide in a public bathroom for ten full minutes, splash cold water onto his face. _He’s not Bruce, he’s not Bruce, stop thinking about Bruce_.

 

*

 

The second week, under the cool artificial air of the AC, in the stillness of the night, Oliver thinks they made love for the first time. The ocean right outside their window, and Hal’s fingers intertwined with his.

“In another life,” Hal had whispered. “In another life, I could have stayed.”

Oliver could picture it.

“I’m fighting so that it doesn’t have to be another life,” he had replied, and Hal had closed on himself like a clam around a pearl.

But Oliver could picture it, clear as day. A universe in which they didn’t have to hide. A universe in which they didn’t have to _die_.

In that universe, he realizes now, Bruce probably isn’t his best friend. In that universe, Bruce probably hangs with tools like Harvey Dent or maybe even Lex fucking _Luthor_.

Maybe in that universe Hal flies commercial planes. Maybe in that universe he’s Ollie’s unavoidable truth, Ollie’s universal constant.

 

*

 

He calls Bruce, months later. Hearing his voice still feels like discovering an oasis in the middle of the desert, and Oliver hates himself for that.

“Did you meet a nice boy while I was away, Mister Queen?” Bruce teases. He sounds well. Ollie knows him too well to believe this is anything but another mask.

“Yeah,” he answers anyway, voice way too rough for the joke. Voice way too honest. “Yeah, I did.”

“Ollie,” Bruce says.

“Bruce,” Ollie says, and it doesn’t taste like gasoline.

 

 

 

 


End file.
